Our spiritual teachers tell us about acceptance- everything is as it should be they say. There is a purpose in all good and all bad, whether it is our micro world or the macro world far away and yet so palpable and horrible as the genocide by starvation of Gaza. And even while I have been practicing this, it’s still like trying on a tight-fitting coat. You struggle and wiggle until you get it on, and then it’s even harder to take off! What throws us off the peace train of acceptance? Well, the first barrier is our own expectations.
Most of my life I went into every situation with expectations- this is how it should be, and if it wasn’t it was a source of frustration, resentment or even anger. I remember making a big fuss that my husband bought me a lesser carat diamond on our tenth anniversary than I expected. Imagine! When I think about that I recoil from who I was! These days as we seek forgiveness in the second third of the month of Ramadan (the first ten days were about mercy), I certainly seek forgiveness for those silly egotistical trouble-making expectations. And more importantly I remind myself of the fact that we are ever-changing and never the person we thought we were- nothing is fixed or permanent.
In my journey of self-development — which accelerates in later decades for sure- I clear my slate of expectations. I find it so much more serene to enter with no expectations and…
